The Story of Last Night and How We Did It Up Good
as told by the ghost of Eudora Welty using considerable artistic license
So there I was, standing on the corner of St. Peter and Rampart Streets, just as common as you please, talking to my friend Jimmy-Jay-Jo-Bob, who we all just call Jim on account of saving time, when along comes the only Serbo-Ukranian princess I know, Dmitri, and a certain lady friend, Bettina, who I hadn’t seen in some time. “Well y’all just pass me by like you don’t even know me from Adam,” I shouted, makin’ Jim turn his head and swivel around like my cousin Eugene P. Saucier the Third when he’s prancing around with his bb-gun like he’s gonna drop everything and run off and join the army this very minute. Next thing I knew, Jim had disappeared inside some bar the looks of which I did not like and I was gallivanting down the banquette with Dmitri and Bettina, making sure to keep the pace slow enough so that none of us spilled anything from the plastic cups of alcohol we were carrying that would have gotten us arrested, fingerprinted, and locked up for years if we’d been anywhere else.
Where are you going, Richard, Dmitri asks in this accent like you’ve never heard in all your born days, sounding for all the world like he still had sand from the Black Sea trapped between his cheek and gums. To a dyke rock show, I replied, as though it were something I do every single day of my natural life. We are going to see some friends at the Bombay Club, would you like to come, he asks, knowing perfectly well that I’m wearing sneakers and jeans not fit for a sharecropper and a sleeveless tank top to boot. No, I say, but if y’all come back after your drink, maybe we can head on up to Twi-Ro-Pa for some of that citified dancing music.
An hour later, Ovary Action had finally gotten their act together and were halfway through their set–which should have been signed, sealed, and delivered an hour and a half before–when from out of the corner of my hazel eye that I probably got from my father’s side of the family I saw a long-haired sodomite and his brunette lady companion burst through the door–Dmitri and Bettina had come back! We hugged and kissed as though we hadn’t seen one another in years and then set about the task of starting this party right.
By the time Bitch and Animal took to the stage, we were in a fine state of affairs. Dmitri was being reprimanded by an apparently insensitive, insecure, whiny little babydyke no bigger than a good-sized can of of Le Sueur peas, and Bettina was becoming acquainted with a very stylish, well-bred woman of apparent means and intellect who had recently hennaed her hair. Myself, I was ready to go.
So! Down the stairs we tumbled, against Bettina’s wishes, I think, and into my car, headed to Twi-Ro-Pa, when Dmitri burst into tears like some red-headed heathen just killed his favorite puppy. He said, I’m already feeling fragile, you know, because of this baseball thing (I didn’t know what he was referring to and I didn’t ever get around to asking, so I’m as mystified as you are), and then that stupid minimuffmuncher has the nerve to look at me while I’m having a good time at a dyke rock show and ask why I’m there, as if People With Penises (he says it like it’s capitalized and all) can’t enjoy womyn’s music (I put in the “y” myself). Bettina and I tried desperately to console him as we sped back toward Dmitri’s apartment so he could run in and grab more cash, which he apparently keeps hidden in his mattress, because he says that’s what all good Europeans do. Eventually me, myself, and I managed to jam an American Spirit between his lips and lit it with my fifty-cent Cricket lighter and that seemed to set things right. Amen!
To be quite honest, there’s not a lot to say about the rest of the evening. Twi-Ro-Pa was fancy as always, looking and feeling more New York than New Orleans, with bass speakers that will knock you off your goddamn feet, may lighting strike me dead if I’m lying. The music started out great and we were dancing and Dmitri was buying drinks, which I forgot to thank him for and I’ll have to do next time I see him, but then the DJ decided that “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” would be cute, and it was for a couple of minutes, but if you’re listening Mr. DJ, half an hour of retro-emo-techno without a single New Beat diddy to liven things up makes people want to tie you up in a burlap bag and hurl you off the Pearl River bridge, on my grandmother’s grave. But rather than risk prosecution, not to mention an hour’s drive to the nearest Pearl River bridge, we departed, and the last I saw of Dmitri and Bettina, they were stumbling into Coop’s for a late night snack.
I swear to God!
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